And Hollywood, being oh so fucking wise, decided “Hey! The public wants underwater movies! Let’s crank out some horror flicks set beneath the sea and cash in on this whole Abyss thing! Money in the bank!”

So, in 1989, there were a total of three (3) underwater based sci-fi and/or horror films. The aforementioned The Abyss, Deepstar Six and our subject, today, Leviathan.

The Abyss scored big, but Deepstar and Leviathan? Tanked. Turns out the Hollywood suits are fucking idiots and the general public actually didn’t give a shit about underwater monster flicks. They wanted a thought provoking story that just so happened to be happening beneath the ocean. The horror fans didn’t even really seem to be that interested in the idea.

I was, though. I had to see all three. I remember enjoying Deepstar, but my memory of Leviathan is a bit fuzzy. It didn’t really leave an impression. So, I had to go to the Hell-Mart bargain bin and pick up a copy to see what the hell it was all about and why it seems to have been erased from my memory.

Robo-Cop is head of a deep sea mining operation, even though he’s just a geologist. The crew has been down there for 88 days and get to leave in 3. So, of course, the Home Alone bad guy (the tall crazy-haired one, not the short, annoying one) falls off a cliff and discovers a big-ass Russian boat. He steals a flask when everybody opens the safe he found. We know this flask is important as the director kindly shoots a close up of him stealing it. Turns out there was some kind of infection or whatnot that wiped out the crew, or something. They learn this by watching a video the captain of the ship left behind. So, Crazy-haired Home Alone Guy and a female miner drink the vodka in the flask. Mutations occur.

Wow, they got a great director to do this thing. I’m not sure how. Cosmatos brought us such flicks as Tombstone (1993), Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) and my favorite Robo-Cop movie, ever: Of Unknown Origin (1983)! And he does a pretty good job. There were definitely some stand out shots, here.

Unfortunately, unlike Of Unknown Origin, which is like Jaws in a house (You don’t see much of the creature.), there are a lot of FX shots of the creatures in Leviathan. Stan Winston was involved in the creature FX and he’s a master artist in that area. But they all look really fucking FAKE. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking old school FX, look at American Werewolf in London or Carpenter’s The Thing. Those still hold up in this day of crappy CGI. So, I have a couple thoughts on what went wrong here. 1) Cosmatos just doesn’t know how to really shoot practical FX and make them work. 2) They didn’t have a lot of money for Winston to work with. Or 3) The studio forced him to show more of the monsters than Cosmatos wanted to. I dunno. But almost none of them work.

The acting is pretty good, all around and there are some good actors in here, as well.

But the story….Good god. I remember when Sci-Fi Channel showed this every month and their pitch was “The greatest Alien rip-off every made”! Umm, ok. I don’t really think I’d want people using that to describe my movie, but what the hell. And that description is only half right. Yeah, it is basically Alien underwater. But it’s also a very healthy dose of Carpenter’s The Thing, as well. Only it’s not executing the ideas nearly as well as either of those two. And being able to predict exactly what’s going to happen makes for kind of a boring movie. Add to that the phony looking monsters and it’s no wonder I forgot about this thing. At least Deepstar had a memorable creature and was sort of original. This is just lame.

All in all, it looks like they tried their hardest to make a good film, and I respect that, but it’s too similar to other, better, films and their budget was stretched too thin. But nice try, fellas.